In Russia in 1959, 9 hikers didn’t return from their hike. Their bodies would later be found scattered around the mountain they hiked in various stages of undress. This along with their horrific injuries would cause more questions than answers. 61 years later we’re still coming up with theories about what happened to them. While the case is officially closed, true crime enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists will never be satisfied by the final explanation.
The Team Doesn't Come Home
On February 14th, 1959, a hiking group of 9 capable and experienced hikers was supposed to return from their 16-day hiking trip over about 217 miles in the Ural Mountains (divides Europe and Asia). This hiking trip was considered one of the more difficult treks, but all 9 were more than capable of completing the trip. The team included 9 students/former students and one prospective professor from the Ural Polytechnic Institute (UPI) in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg – the 4th largest city today in Russia) in Soviet Russia where they most all were members of the UPI hiking club.
- 23-year-old, Igor Dyatlov
- 22-year-old, Zinaida “Zina” Kolmogorova
- 21-year-old, Yuri Doroshenko
- 24-year-old, Aleksander Kolevatov
- 20-year-old, Lyudmila “Luda” Dubinina
- 23-year-old, Yuri “Georgiy” Krivonischenko
- 23-year-old, Rustem Slobodin
- 23-year-old, Nikolay “Nicholas” Thibault-Brignolle
- 38-year-old, Semyon Alexander “Sasha” Zolotarev
However, not one of the team returned from this trip. When they didn’t return, family, friends and UPI thought perhaps they were just delayed. But after a few more days, there was still no word from the group and parents were getting more worried and more persistent in urging UPI to take action. At this time, there was no specific “unit” of searchers, instead a group of friends, fellow skiers, community members, and students and teachers made up the team of searchers that would go out and look for the missing group. The first thing they found was the collapsed and abandoned tent along with many of the belongings and supplies, but the hikers were still nowhere to be seen.
The Team
Igor Alekseevich Dyatlov born January 13, 1936, was the leader of this group of hikers and was well respected by his fellow hikers. He joined the UPI hiking club during his first year and had been hiking harder and harder trails ever since. In fact, he had been hiking with the UPI hikers since he was in 7th grade. His older brother, Vyacheslav attended UPI and hiked with them and Igor would go with them. Igor even had a portable radio that he’d made himself. Now in his 5th year at UPI, the 23-year-old was on track to graduate with a degree in Radio Engineering. He was described as someone who was thorough and friendly. Igor was also called, “brave, confident, experienced, and passionate.”
The USSR had launched Sputnik in 1957 and Igor was very good with mechanical things and engineering. According to Igor’s younger sister, Tatyana, getting into UPI was challenging and competitive. It was impressive to get accepted and graduate from there. To the BBC, she said: “It was so magical. Everyone believed that after he graduated, Igor would go into cosmonautics. It was a brand new industry, and he wanted to be part of it. Imagine, the war had just ended, and the country was utterly devastated, everything had to be restored, specialists were needed. Igor and his friends wanted to study serious subjects – engineering, physics, complex technical topics. Everybody wanted to work hard for their homeland. They were real Soviet people, in the best sense of the word.”
Tatyana was 12 in 1959 and talked with a BBC writer in 2019 about her big brother, Igor and her memories of this time. She said that their mother had begged Igor to stay home and work on his thesis instead of going on this hike, but Igor wanted just one more hike before graduation. His mom acquiesced. (She would never forgive herself until the day she died.)
During his time as a student at UPI, Igor had been working hard on his school work, but had also been hiking trails at greater and greater difficulties until he was hiking the most difficult trials or “category 3” hikes. UPI used a scale where category 1 was the easiest and 3 was the hardest. The hikers had to complete a certain number of each level hike in order to advance to the next level. Igor had made it to the category 3 level and was now planning to lead this next hike.
UPI had a system where the hiker leading the hike (Igor in this case) would plan the hike (the route, the supplies needed, the schedule, everything) and present their plan to UPI administrators who would approve or reject the plan. If the plan was approved, UPI provided a majority of the supplies. Igor had actually invented and engineered a few things that would be beneficial on a hike. He created a “stove” (which was a heater – not for cooking, apparently) that could be disassembled to be carried in the hikers packs and then used in the tent to keep the hikers warm. He also created a “double tent” (2 tents sewed together) that could house 12-14 people. The one invention that he created that UPI eventually rejected for use on this hike was the 2-way radio. The reasoning behind UPI rejecting the use of this tool on this hike was that it would negate the category 3 rating…basically, it would make the hike slightly easier?
So, in November of 1958, Igor submitted his plan through the hiking club for this trip that would take place during the school’s winter break (mid-January – mid-February). The hiking club submitted the plan to the UPI administration and they would go on to approve the trek.
Once Igor was given permission for the hike, he began putting together a team of experienced hikers/skiers to join him. First, was Zinaida “Zina” Alekseevna Kolmogorova. It was said that they were dating at this time, but other sources say that “if there were romantic feelings towards Igor, however, there’s not the slightest clue in her personal letter to him” that she wrote on January 16th, 1959.
Zina was born on January 12, 1937 and was 22-years-old at this time. She was majoring in Radio Engineering as well. Like Igor, she had been a long time member of the UPI hiking club. Girlfriend was TOUGH. She was not one to shy away from the pain and suffering that comes from completing these intense, exhausting, physically demanding hikes. One story about her that proves her dedication to this sport and her loyalty to her teammates was the time that she was on a hike just the year before this final hike.
Zina was bitten by a snake (a viper) and she came very close to losing her life. After the bite, she was more worried about her team and apologized to them! She felt bad that they were going to have to pick up her slack for the rest of the hike, but she refused to give up much of, if any of, her load. The team helped her move along and eventually, they found a family that lived in the forest. This family saved Zina’s life by applying the remedies they knew about from living in the area. Zina’s bite took weeks to heal and it was very painful, but it didn’t turn her away from hiking. She was a leader and she was going to keep hiking. Zina was described as “generous,” “gentle,” and “very popular.”
The next team member to join was 21-year-old Yuri Nickolaevich Doroshenko. Yuri was in his 4th year at UPI also studying Radio Engineering. Yuri was born January 29, 1938 and was described as “strong” and “reliable.” Yuri and Zina had previously dated, but he had broken up with her. The BBC article mentions that Zina had written a letter to a friend that was found after her death that suggested that Zina was actually nervous about being on this hike with Yuri Doroshenko after he broke up with her. “I really don’t know how I’ll feel. It’s really hard, because we are together and yet we’re not together.” He had even met her parents. She had reportedly fallen in love with him during another hike…..
Yuri had had a near-death experience on a hike where his whole team was at risk, but he was the one that stepped up and protected everyone (including Zina). On this earlier hike, Yuri and his team encountered a bear that was making a bee-line toward their campsite. Yuri reportedly picked up a geologist’s hammer and went after the bear. He basically did the Charles Manson thing of acting crazier than your opponent. The bear took off and the team of hikers continued on their way. Zina fell hard. Yuri was from a very poor family. Like, his-mom-saved-money-for-years-to-buy-him-a-warm-coat level of poor. He was said to have “great endurance” and was “considered the hardest worker of the team.”
Members would continue to join the team from the hiking club…
Aleksander Sergeevich Kolevatov was born on November 16, 1934 (24-years-old) and had been in the hiking club at his previous school before enrolling in UPI and joining their hiking club. Aleksander was in his 4th year at UPI as a Physics and Technology major.
Aleksander had previously attended another university in Moscow where he majored in Metallurgy. After graduating, he used his degree to get a job in Moscow as a senior lab assistant at the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (“a classified institute”) where they did research and developed materials for the “nuclear industry.” But Aleksander decided to go back to school and after 3 years working at the institute, he enrolled at UPI and joined their hiking team.
He was the 5th out of 6 kids and the only boy, but the girl that was born after him died in childhood. Aleksander’s dad was the financial director of some of the factories in the area and made decent money. According to dyatlovpass.com, Aleksander didn’t attend school and instead, his older sister Rimma taught him and apparently she would later become a very well-known teacher for developing a program for special education specifically for children with behavioral concerns/disorders.
After the war started in 1941, Aleksander’s life turned upside down. When he was about 10-years-old, his father was killed by a train and was found dead on the tracks. His family lost everything since his dad was the breadwinner and they lost their social standing immediately as well. Now the family was starving and his mother was sick so she was unable to work. After the war ended, the family moved to Sverdlovsk. It was only now that Aleksander went to school. Rimma taught at the one-room school that he attended. The only class that Aleksander did well in was his German language class, but his grades and study skills would improve after he joined the Young Communists – “Komsomol.” Fortunately, college was free in the USSR (if you worked for 3 years at a specifically assigned location after) and it provided a uniform (so, clothes) and food.
Aleksander was described as “cautious, diligent, and studious” and “well-liked,” “admired,” “strong,” “orderly,” “methodical,” and a “natural leader.” The book Death of Nine said his favorite hobby was collecting and smoking antique pipes. He was considered a very beneficial member of any hiking team.
The only other girl on this ill-fated hike was Lyudmila “Luda” Aleksandrovna Dubinina. She was born on May 12, 1938 and was just 20-years-old so she was the youngest hiker, but she was still a very valued member. She was an Engineering and Economics major at UPI and was in her 3rd year. This hike was going to be her 1st category 3 hike.
Again, being a girl did not make her any less of a team member than the men. This was the late 50s so women were supposed to be home, barefoot and pregnant, but it was the late 50s in Russia. Russia don’t give a fuck. Luda had actually been on a hike in 1957 where she had gotten shot in the leg by a hunter. It was a complete accident, but Luda had to be carried down from the hike on a stretcher. All the while, she apologized to the other members of her team. As soon as Luda had healed from the injury (in a few months) she was back hiking. And in 1958, she would return the favor when a member of a hike was injured and Luda carried their stretcher. She was said to have remained upbeat throughout.
She was called a “merry-maker” and “cheerful” girl who loved photography and was a member of the UPI ice dancing club. Luda was called a “gifted athlete and singer.” Death of Nine also notes that Luda’s family were “solid communists” and that she was an “avid supporter of the government.” Her father, Aleksander was the director of a logging factory on the teeny tiny island of Kegostrov. Her mother, Iya was the head of the kindergarten there. Then the family moved to Sverdlovsk in 1953 when her father was transferred.
The BBC article described her as “a stern, somewhat humourless member of the Komsomol – the Young Communists.” (Apparently all the hikers were members of this group because you couldn’t really have a future without it.) It did mention though that her diary showed that she was “beginning to loosen her neat blonde plaits.” She was called a “hard worker,” “reliable,” independent,” “strong,” and “brave.” A friend of Luda’s said, “She was so excited that she was approved to go with Dyatlov and was kind of inspired, anxious, training, getting ready. She was a strong person, both physically and spiritually.”
Georgiy Alekseevich Krivonischenko was born on February 7, 1935 so he was 23-years-old and had already graduated from UPI after studying construction and hydraulics. His degree in Civil Engineering helped him get a job as an engineer at Plant 817 and he had previously worked at Mayak nuclear plant.
In September of 1957, Georgiy was involved in the cleanup of “The Kyshtym Disaster” at Chelyabinsk-40 (a secret nuclear facility). This was a nuclear contamination that was considered the worst nuclear disaster until Chernobyl happened. So now the ranking is 1. Chernobyl, 2. Fukushima and then 3. the Kyshtym Disaster. Georgiy being involved in the cleanup of this massive disaster earned him a promotion to a supervisor at the plant. He was expected to start in that position February 21st (right after this hike with Igor and friends) and was on a break from work for a month at the time of the hike.
Igor and Georgiy had been close friends and had hiked together numerous times. The team frequently came to his parents’ apartment in Sverdlovsk. His father was the chief construction engineer for the Beloyarski Hydro-Electro Station and both he and Georgiy’s mother were fairly well off, especially for the time and were “influential people.” He was considered the “life of the party” and was always the one to attempt to lighten the mood and make everyone laugh. Georgiy was described as a “skilled artist and musician,” “dependable,” reliable,” well-liked,” and “well-known.”
Rustem Vladimirovich Slobodin was born on January 11, 1936 so he was also 23-years-old and had already graduated from UPI in 1958. He had received a degree in Mechanical Engineering and also worked at Plant 817 with Georgiy (Rustem wasn’t a part of the clean up of the disaster). Rustem was described as “very athletic,” (he was a long distance runner), “agile,” “strong,” and “resilient.” Rustem was considered an honest and hard-working man. He was also musical and played the mandolin which he would play around the campfire with his friends. With all these amazing qualities, he was still the shyest of the hikers.
Yuri Yefimovich Yudin was born on July 19, 1937 and he was 22-years-old when this trip was being planned. He was an Engineering and Economic major at UPI (like Luda). However, he had sciatica that could sometimes flare up and cause him significant pain. This would be the only thing that saved his life from whatever happened to his friends on this trip.
Nikolay “Nicholas” Vladimirovich Thibault-Brignolle joined the team and was a welcomed member! He was born July 5, 1935 (though this has been debated as not being his actual birthdate) and at 23-years-old, he had also already graduated from UPI in 1958. He had earned a degree in Civil Engineering and gotten a job as an engineering foreman working in construction. He had lived a fairly hard life already.
Nicholas’ mother was Russian and his father was French. His father was accused of being a revolutionary and was convicted of “crimes against the state.” He was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in the mines and some sources say, the rest of the family was thrown into an internment camp where Nicholas was born. However, a cousin of Nicholas’ would later tell an interviewer that this wasn’t the case and that only his father had been put in a camp. His father died during this sentence when Nicholas was 9.
However, this rough beginning didn’t break Nicholas. He was still described as “cheerful,” “reliable,” and “self-confident.” Nicholas was one of those guys that if he saw that a team member was struggling with their load, he would take on some of their weight. He was considered “extremely popular, energetic, and well-liked.” It was said he had a great sense of humor as well and he’d been a valued member of previous hikes including many category 3’s.
Semyon “Sasha” Alexander Zolotarev was the final member of the group and his joining the team was a little controversial. He was not an original member of the hike according to the submitted plan. Sasha was a solid decade older than the rest of the hikers. He was born February 2, 1921 and at 37-years-old, Sasha had already fought in World War II where he earned 4 combat medals. The Death of Nine book said that “By the end of WW2 97% of Russian males born in 1921, who served in the war perished as casualties of the war. [Sasha] was one of the 3% who survived.” He was no slouch.
Sasha had worked at a few schools after the war was over. Both at the Moscow School of Military Engineers and Leningrad Military Engineering School, Sasha lost his job due to a “reduction of students.” So, he went back to school. He attended the Minsk Institute of Physical Education where he graduated in 1951. He became an athletic and hiking instructor and then applied for a job at UPI. According to the book, Sasha was in the running for a position as an instructor when the administration approached Igor to secure a place for Sasha on the hike.
Other sources said that he joined after they had already started their hike or that he realized the Dyatlov group was going on a shorter hike than one he’d already planned to join and switched. How he became a member of this hike is inconsistent across sources and some don’t mention it at all. No matter how he became part of the group, at first his attendance was unsettling to Igor and the other hikers. They were going on a category 3 hike. The most difficult category hike. In this situation, everyone has to be able to trust all the members of the team and everyone must carry their own weight and then some.
The rest of this team knew each other and knew they could rely on each other and that all the other members would be reliable members of the group. Throwing in a wildcard, and an older wildcard at that, threw off the dynamics and unsettled the team. However, Sasha quickly proved that he was going to be an active and trusted member of the team. They had worried that this older man, who was a professor, who had served in the military and fought in a war and had been one of the 3% of Russian men to survive that war – was going to swoop in and want to be in charge. Their fears were alleviated when he didn’t come in thinking he was going to lead and showed that he respected that Igor was the leader of this hike and team. Plus, once they started getting ready, Sasha showed that he was not afraid to put in the work and be a team member to the fullest extent.
This was the team. 10 healthy, capable, strong, smart people from 20-37 years old. All people on the team were experienced and ready for the hike they were going on and they were all excited to face this challenge.
The Trip
With his team formed and their supplies packed, Igor Dyatlov and his team began their adventure on January 23rd, 1959. From this point on, the information that is available to the public is mostly from the pictures they took and the diaries that each kept as well as the group diary that they all took turns writing in. There are also witness statements from people who saw the group during their travels to get to their actual route, but once the hike began we no longer had that as a source.
As we said before, UPI had supplied the hikers with the necessities they would need, and they also rejected the use of the 2-way radio Igor Dyatlov created. It was only said that the “luxury” of a radio negated the challenge of the category 3 hike. This type of hike was about surviving in the harsh, unforgiving wilderness with only the absolute bare minimum of supplies. UPI provided skis, poles, tools, and coats to name a few things. There were no “extras” of anything. The team had to carry everything on their backs so anything extra would be more weight. The hike would be in the Ural Mountains (which, apparently, divides Europe and Asia) and in this area, the snow could get up to more than 10 feet deep making skis a requirement for this hike.
Each team member carried their personal items in their backpacks along with things for the group like food and tools. They were not supposed to bring alcohol on hikes, but everyone looked the other way when hikers packed alcohol. The Dyatlov group was no different, and they had vodka in a flask, but it was understood by everyone that with the “looking the other way” policy also meant that the “illegal” alcohol was to be consumed in moderation. This is Russia for cryin’ out loud. Of course they took vodka with them.
On January 23rd, the team boarded a train in Sverdlovsk. They were on this train with another group of hikers led by Yuri Blinov who would be able to give information about the Dyatlov group up to a certain point as well as conditions in the mountains. The Blinov group was also from UPI, but their hike was scheduled to take 25-days. Their route was only a just a few miles apart from Dyatlov’s and the two groups’ routes were basically parallel to each other. This train took the team to Serov where they arrived in the early morning hours of January 24th. The teams had time to kill until their next train was scheduled for 6:30 pm, and they were not allowed to just hang around the train station until then.
Unfortunately, in the time it took for the team to confer and make a decision about what to do with themselves, Georgiy decided to get a little silly. They were all tired and trying to decide what to do themselves for the next 12ish hours while they also have all this gear. It’s not like they could just go strolling around with these heavy backpacks. One source said that Georgiy had asked Luda (the treasurer) for money to get breakfast. She told him they didn’t have that budgeted so he tried to get money another way. Georgiy tried to cheer everyone up and started singing and being his silly self (and, based on the one source, earn a little extra money). But this is communist Russia and “fun” is unacceptable so a police officer arrives and tells the group that this was “a good communist town” and there’s “no crime here and certainly no disruption of the peace.” Georgiy was arrested and taken to the police station.
This could have very easily thrown the group off their schedule if Georgiy had been held for a long time, but after a few hours of stressing, Georgiy was released and told as long as he kept his shit together and his voice down, the police wouldn’t push anything. Georgiy promised to behave and the team was back on track. Their train still wasn’t scheduled for hours so they found a school that was near the station where they were allowed to store their supplies in exchange for coming to talk to the students about hiking and everything it entails. They did that and enjoyed themselves (the kids were sad they were leaving, especially Zina) and then went back to the train station.
Back at the station waiting for their train, the group was accused by a drunk guy of stealing his wallet and his vodka. The police showed up again, but simply escorted the drunk away. FINALLY, their train came and they could get the fuck out of this town that keeps giving them so much grief. This train took them to Ivdel where they arrived around midnight. They were allowed to hang out at this station until their bus was scheduled to arrive so they busted out sleeping bags and such and tried to get some sleep (or at least rest) before their bus arrived. This bus would take them to a village called Vizhay where the group would finally get a chance to sleep for real. They arrived in Vizhay around 2 pm on January 25th and at this point the Dyatlov group and the Blinov group split.
Finally, on January 26th, the Dyatlov group hopped on an “open truck” and left Vizhay. They rode in this fashion for 3 hours before getting to their first real destination: 41st Quarter. This was a logging settlement and the group of hikers was given a hostel to stay at during their short time here. The Dyatlov group had a great time with these men, and they all sang songs while Rustem played a mandolin. They watched movies and talked all night. Zina’s diary would say that most of their conversations were about love.
As much fun as the team had, you’d think they had stayed here for a few days, but no, that was only one night. On January 27th, the Dyatlov group packed their shit back up and at about 4pm headed to a mining town called 2nd North. However, by this time, Yuri Yudin’s sciatica had flared up to an unbearable pain. He decided that there was no way he could complete the hike and especially not without really hindering his team.
He went with the group to 2nd North, but from there, he split off and went back to Sverdlovsk. Yuri Yudin was an important member of the team, but he knew that if he continued on, he would drag the team behind and might not even be able to finish. At 2nd North, he collected mineral and rock samples to take back to UPI and examine, but on January 28th, he headed back home after he split up his supplies with the team and had a brief talk with Igor. When he left at around 10 am that would be the last time any of his friends were seen alive.
On January 28th at around 11:45 am, the group left 2nd North with one less person and began their hike. They hiked until around 4 pm before they took a break for lunch. The group would only hike for another hour and a half before they stopped for the night. During this first night, they were in high spirits and spent the night singing and talking around the campfire. This was also when they would do “chores” – it was a rule that everyone had chores to do and had to complete them before anyone could sit around the fire – and someone would document the day in the group diary and some would write in their personal journals.
In her personal diary, Zina wrote that Igor had been in a “bad mood all evening” and that she “just didn’t recognize it.” Luda would be the one to write in the group diary that night and in her entry she was very detailed. She talked about being sad that Yuri Yudin didn’t get to come on the hike. She explained that their hike involved each person taking turns leading the group for 10 minutes and that they finally stopped for the night at 5:30 pm. She also said that they spent the night talking about love and that “[s]omeone comes up with the idea that we need a special notebook for ideas that we might come up with. Conspiring, we started going into the tent two people at a time.” Luda’s entry tells us that Aleksander was the guy on duty for the night to keep an eye on the stove.
The crew was headed toward Mount Ortorten which was a name given to the area by the native people, the Mansi. The Mansi were reindeer herders and had many signs with writing and symbols on them throughout the woods. This nomadic group of people was also known to offer food and shelter to hikers. There would be theories later that the Mansi had something to do with what happened to the group of hikers, but there are numerous sources that say that this theory was quickly dismissed because the Mansi have never shown any violence to any of the hikers that come through. The area that the Dyatlov group was in wasn’t of any religious or spiritual significance to the Mansi.
This theory had some traction when people found out the names of the areas involved in this case and the meanings of the names. Mount Ortorten where the Dyatlov group was headed means “Do Not Go There” in Mansi. And the area where they set up camp their last night was Mt. Kholat Syakhl which means “Dead Mountain.” While this may seem ominous, these names simply told the Mansi people that these areas weren’t good for hunting.
On January 29th, in -13°C the team went about their hike in much the same way where each man took a 10 minute turn leading the group and the group as a whole would take short breaks after all the men had had their turn leading (every 70 minutes they took a break). The hikers used the Mansi signs to lead them and the ski trails the Mansi had created. January 29th was also Yuri Doroshenko’s 21st birthday. January 30th was again, much of the same. Starting their hike at 9:30 am with 4 ft deep snow and temperatures between a high of -13°C (8.6°F) all the way down to -26°C (-14°F) the group makes their way higher up the mountain. They stop for lunch around 2 pm. By the way lunch is: dried meat, crackers, sugar, garlic, and coffee.
They finish their day around 5 pm and set up camp. According to their diaries, Luda and Nicholas had a spat about chores, and Luda ended up retreating into the tent. At some point there is an incident where Yuri’s coat and mittens were burned and Zina wrote in her diary that she “burned my (her) mittens and Yuri’s jacket at the campfire – he cursed me a lot!” In her personal diary, Zina also says that they will probably build a storage area sooner rather than later. (A storage site is just a shelter where hikers can put some of their supplies while they finish the upward ascent of their hike. Then, they would pick it all up on the way back down. This way they are not having to carry as heavy a load.)
An odd thing that is noted in one of the diaries is that today (January 30th) is Aleksander’s birthday. However, Aleksander’s birthday is November 16th. He told everyone that it was his birthday and they gave him a tangerine which he shared among the hikers sitting by the fire that night.
The last day
The final entry in the group diary was written on January 31st by Igor. Nothing was out of the ordinary. The weather was noted as being “a bit worse wind” with snow and a “perfectly clear” sky. The temperatures were reported as -18°C (-0.4°F) and -24°C (-11.2°F). The team started their day around 10 am and it would appear that they encountered a hunter. The group diary said: “Came out relatively early (around 10 am). Took the same Mansi sled trail. Till now we walk along a Mansi trail, which was crossed by a deer hunter not long ago. Yesterday we apparently came across his resting stop. Deer didn’t go much further. The hunter didn’t follow the beaten trail and we are now in his steps.”
In the diary, Igor wrote that walking was harder on this day and that visibility was “very low” to the point where they “have to advance gropingly” covering only about 1 mile per hour. He wrote that they were exhausted and that he “can’t even start thinking of setting up a storage.” So despite what Zina wrote in her diary the previous day, the group hadn’t yet set up the storage site at almost 4 pm the following day. Igor also made note that they were running low on firewood because all the trees were damp.
On February 1st, there are no more diary entries which means this is the end of our concrete knowledge on what the Dyatlov hikers did in those snow covered mountains.
the investigation
By February 12th, when the team hadn’t returned, no one was especially worried about it. Teams often get held up for one reason or another plus, Yuri Yudin had given UPI the message from Igor that they already planned to be delayed until the 14th. On top of that the Blinov group that had traveled the first leg of the journey with the Dyatlov group reported that the snow was heavy which was supported by the news. February 14th came and went without word from the Dyatlov group.
By February 17th, families had grown concerned. Luda and Aleksander’s parents called UPI, but they were assured by UPI that everything was fine. Delays are normal. In fact, Lev Semyonovich Gordo – the head of the sport club at UPI – lied to the parents telling them he had received a telegram from the group. But a few more days would pass and there would still be no sign of or word from the hikers so the families decided that they were done waiting.
After a February 20th meeting with the Sverdlovsk City Committee and UPI administrators the committee and administrators decided it was time to send out searchers to attempt to locate the missing hikers. Colonel Georgiy Semyonovich Ortyukov was the head of the military department of UPI and he took the lead in creating the search and rescue. According to the Death of Nine book, at this time there were no formal search parties and because of this, a search party consisted of anyone willing and able. In this case, it was students, instructors, and “experienced winter outdoorsmen.” And to make up the budget, businesses and universities would donate to the search effort.
With this effort and community involvement, a plane was sent on the 21st to fly over the area and look for signs of the Dyatlov group. Unfortunately, Joey wasn’t part of the group and didn’t spell out “PLEH” in sticks so there were no signs of distress that could be seen from the sky. The plane flew over again on the 22nd, but still nothing. At this point search dogs were brought in, the Mansi people joined the party, prison guards, cops and forest rangers all became a part of the search. On February 23rd when nothing could be seen from the sky, searchers were dropped off in the area the Dyatlov was projected to be based on their route plan Igor had submitted to the administration.
It would be for another 3 days before they found the Dyatlov group’s abandoned campsite on the Kholat Syakhl slope. The tent had partially collapsed and there was some snow on top of it. Outside the tent was a pair of skis and an ice axe along with a flashlight laying on top of the crumpled tent. The searchers tried the flashlight and it still worked. Lots of other little things were found outside the tent and strewn about the snow. Things like socks, hats, loose change, etc. Also left behind was Igor’s coat with a pocket knife and a picture of Zina in the pockets.
Also near the tent, and more unsettling than what was left behind were the footprints in the snow leading away from the tent. The prints were described as shallow indents that would lead one to believe that the group left calmly since they were neat. The disturbing part about this is that the footprints appeared to have been made by people without shoes on. Either socked or bare feet had made these prints.
Not only did the prints look like bare feet in shape, but the prints weren’t indentions anymore as you would expect, but were more like columns. Apparently, if you step in snow barefoot or with just socks, the warmth from your feet will melt the snow which then refreezes into ice. Then the snow around this ice gets blown away and leaves behind columns of ice. It was also noted that there were marks that looked like handprints and drag marks within the footprints. The prints went on for about 30 feet and then disappeared.
The searchers carefully opened the tent half prepared to find at least a few bodies. There were none, but there were other things that alarmed the search team. Left behind in the tent was food, a pile of boots, blankets, backpacks, diaries (the group diary, Luda’s, Zina’s, Rustem’s, and an unsigned one that has never been linked to a specific hiker), buckets, and a metal box as well as 4 cameras, a flask of vodka, a saw, a flashlight, 3 axes, a knife, 2 kettles, a first aid kit, 3 compasses, a pocket watch. Outside the tent the searchers found socks and slippers wrapped in what turned out to be Igor’s checkered shirt. They also apparently found a place where someone had peed in the snow.
It even appeared as though the group had been in the middle of dinner when whatever caused them to abandon the tent happened. There was sallow cut up on a plate (white pork fat that – at the time at least – was a “delicacy” and provided a significant amount of calories for hikers), bread, biscuits, sugar, and a cup of cocoa all laid out on the floor and the stove for heating the tent was said to be full of kindling that had not been burned. A searcher, Mikhail Sharavin said of the meat on the plate, “It was sliced up as if they were getting ready to have supper or something and didn’t have time.”
The searchers read the diaries in an attempt to glean information about the Dyatlov group’s trip. They opened the metal box and found Igor’s passport, the group’s return train tickets, and 700 rubles. With all the money and supplies left behind, it was clear that the Dyatlov group hadn’t been attacked by criminals looking for money. It’s also important to know that the things inside the now flat tent such as crackers and other delicate items were not crushed or broken at all. This would seemingly rule out an avalanche.
Continuing to search the tent didn’t alleviate fears. The search team also found a bamboo ski pole that had been cut up. The top was off and a notch was carved in the wood of the pole. This is significant because the team only brought what they needed and there were no extras. There were only 2 poles for each hiker so having one cut up means that now one hiker would only have 1 pole.
There were so many pieces of clothing and protective gear that had been left behind that it made the searchers worried about the hikers. According to the book, at the campsite, the searchers found 9 coats, 8 jackets, coat liners, a fur coat, 2 fur vests, 4 ski-pants, a pair of cotton pants, 4 scarves, 13 pairs of gloves, 7 boots (3 pair and an extra), 8 pairs of shoes, 6 pairs of ski boots, 3 winter hats, a fur hat, and slippers. This would be the majority of their clothing along with their blankets and all 9 of their backpacks still in the tent.
Then, once the canvas of the tent had been stretched out the searchers found that there were small cuts and then a long cut in the side of the tent (the front and back entrances of the tent were not obstructed) which they would later determine (via a seamstress who just happened to be in the building after the tent was transported) that the tent had been cut from the inside.
Since it was 1959, forensics and procedure were more like suggestions than rules. The search team that found the campsite basically just plowed through all the things left at the campsite and emptied the backpacks and threw everything into one big pile that was then packed up and taken to Ivdel. Once everything was in Ivdel, Yuri Yudin had the unfortunate job of identifying all the things and their original owner. However, there were a few items that he claimed didn’t belong to anyone as far as he knew.
Unfortunately, no one is thinking that they are going to find the hikers dead, and they especially aren’t thinking that if they did find them dead, that there might be concerns about how they died. The priority to collect forensic evidence was low, plus it was the 50s. Because of this, things were overlooked and not documented. There are only pictures of 1 side of the tent so we don’t know if there were cuts on both sides. The searchers would also end up using the groups cameras they found in the tent to take pictures during the search.
It was determined by the Sverdlovsk Research Crime Lab that the seamstress in Ivdel had been correct and the tent had been cut open from the inside out – it had not been torn open or even started with a knife and then ripped, it had been fully cut all the way down the side of the tent. It was also noted that there were more small knife scrapes along the inside of the tent that led the investigators to conclude that they hadn’t made the cut in the spur of the moment, but that they had made some preliminary cuts before making the main one. The fact that they would cut open their tent concerned everyone. In that environment, the tent is your shelter, your protection, and your life, but the group of hikers decided to slice down the side of the tent instead of going out of the front or back. What could have caused them to decide that their best bet was to cut their way out of the tent on the side facing down the slope?
With the help of the Mansi trackers, the search team located a storage site that belonged to the Dyatlov group. It appeared that the group had created the site before whatever happened, happened, but they had never come back to the spot to access the supplies. More confusing though was the fact that there was a pair of skis that were criss-crossed marking the site. This is confusing because the group didn’t have a spare set of skis so whoever left their skis would not be able to continue skiing with the group and would also have difficulty just walking around the campsite and to and from the storage site.
Then, on February 27th, the search team found the first 2 missing hikers.
For part two, please click here.
Sources for this episode
Death of Nine: The Dyatlov Pass Mystery by Launton Anderson
Russia reopens investigation into 60-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery
History’s Mysteries Revealed: The Dyatlov Pass Incident — Museum Center at 5ive Points
Night of horror: Russia closes case on Dyatlov mystery
